What am I doing wrong.

[Tacohead]

I just got mount and blade last week and loving this mod but getting bit stuck the further along I get.

Battle report.
I'm at 136days and everything seems to be slowly going downhill. I have 2castles with 180troops spread over 2garisons and personal army. Moneys tight and getting worse, I remember being at 39k a while ago and now I'm sitting at 14k and losing more every week while gaining next to none. Three of the nations are at war and send armies to siege me constantly so I can hardly move around the map. My villages hate me as well for some reason despite putting several building upgrades in them. I can't seem to recruit from any villages so I resort to chasing down parties with prisoners and have a heap of the refugee woman upgrades (sword sister final tier).


How do I make money? I can't seem to leave my castle for very long at all as I'm always getting sieged and have to bring my army back to scare them off. Add in the fact that 3nations hate me I can't trade all to well with anyone.

What should I do with my lord? Do I give him troops or will his army increase on it's own? Will troops upgrade If I give him lowbies? If I give him a castle what happens to all the barracks units.

What's the deal with the villages. I thought you're supposed to recruit peasants to turn into your native army but my villages hate me even with upgraded buildings.

Do troops get exp while in garrison or salary cut?

Is their any benefit to keeping enemy troops in prison (besides lords/kings) or just sell them all?

 

[dzorro]

download the latest version 4.1 and then patch 2 that should solve most of the things. And you can still give castle to your lords and plus the castle you gave to him will generate soldiers on there own if you haven't change the option not to. Just mak sure they have the barracks or the other upgrade to recruit either foot soldiers or archers and you can also take men from your lords castle.

 

[King Loras]

In SoD, most of your money is going to be taxes, especially later in the game. And for me, the best places to provide taxes are prosperous towns with a high number of attached fiefs. That means Veluca and Yalen are the cream of the crop. With investment and buildings, your income can grow quite a bit. But of course, the requirements of garrisons and such will also increase, so it's not all pure profit here. It's going to be a race between costs and income for a while, but better more of each than less of each.

Unfortunately, with a small number of soldiers and a ton of enemies, opportunities to expand are going to be nearly impossible to come by. I'm not sure I'd be able to get out of that situation without asking for peace. Sieges hurt your wallet, as I'm sure you've noticed, so I would find some way to isolate my enemies and crush them in a bunch of little battles (preferably while being at war with one Kingdom at a time). Multiple kingdoms can be very frustrating, especially if they all have most of their Lords in the field.

For me, the most important part of creating your kingdom in SoD is what you do BEFORE you capture your first castle. Doing quests for the guild masters of the towns you'll want in the future, doing quests for the villages you'll want in the future, buying everybody ale at the tavern from time to time, winning tournaments (not just for the money, but also for the renown and relationship bonus). I do these things to get a feel for my future kingdom, and to "soften" it up to my eventual attack. To me, it's important to spend at least a certain amount of time as a pauper with a small army to avoid those high costs at first. Then when I've done as much preparation as I can, I make my kingdom. In times past there has always been plenty of time until the invasion for me to prepare for the Centurions, so I don't really worry about that phase of the game for a while.